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Adjectives
(Guided notes)
Nouns and verbs are the basic building blocks of language; all other words are dependent on them in
some way and act as either relational links or modifiers. You have probably learned that adjectives
modify or describe nouns. Usually, this is true.
A red balloon
a tall woman
a loving dog
a heavy weight
But not all words that modify nouns are adjectives, and not all adjectives modify nouns. But what does
modification mean? Look at the series of boxes below. They are all the same.
So, we modify one so that it stands out from the rest.
This is the purpose of modification: the modifier differentiates one member from all the other members
of the same class. In English, however, we don’t always use adjectives to modify nouns. We can modify
nouns with…
Adjectives: The tall man differentiates one man from others who are not as tall as he is.
Nouns: The kitchen sink differentiates one kind of sink from others in a house.
Verbs/verb phrases: The cat sleeping in the sun identifies a specific cat.
Prepositions/ propositional phrases: A bottle of milk names a bottle that differs from a bottle of wine or
a bottle of pop.
So, with so many kinds of grammatical structures that can modify a noun, how can we identify
adjectives? Adjectives have several characteristics not shared by the other kinds of noun modifiers and
that’s what we’ll be looking at here.
Many adjectives have common _____________________.
…like - Barnlike, swanlike, childlike, crablike, catlike, etc.
…ous - Porous, copious, strenuous, vacuous, etc.
…able - Livable, drivable, doable, likeable, tolerable, etc.
Adjectives
(Guided notes)
Adjectives can be made ________________ or __________________.
a.
Through inflection (the sad puppy, the sadder puppy, the saddest puppy)
(a good shoe, a better shoe, the best shoe)
b.
Through using __________ and _____________.
(The beautiful car, the more beautiful car, the most beautiful car)
(A cunning fox, a more cunning fox, the most cunning fox)
Adjectives can be modified with ______________________ or _______________________ which specify
the degree or quantity of the quantity for which the adjective stands.
Ex.
The very sad man
The rather hungry dog
The somewhat thirsty cat
The quite lovable pillow
A really hot day
A fairly cold morning
The too friendly man
The awfully tired girl
A pretty ugly sweater
_______________________________________________________________________ .
The Test frame sentence. A test frame sentence is a sentence in which you should be able to plug in any
adjective and have the sentence still make sense. If you plug in the supposed adjective and the sentence
does not make sense, then it is not an adjective.
The __________________ man is very __________________.
To use the frame as a test you’ll need to place the base form of the same adjective in both slots:
Ex. The sad man is very sad.
Note: In using the frame sentence, remember that not all adjectives can modify all nouns, so it may be
necessary to change the noun in the frame.
For example, The grapey man is very grapey sounds a bit strange, but the grapey wine is very grapey works
perfect.